Nonfiction Reading Series Spring 2015

The Nonfiction Reading Series features local, national, and international writers of all types of nonfiction: memoir and autobiography, the personal essay, political essays, and historical narrative, among others. The series launched officially in spring 2008 with the signature event "What is Nonfiction?" headlined by Judith Kitchen and Minnie Bruce Pratt. In addition to sponsoring local, regional, national, and international writers, the series features undergraduate, graduate, and faculty writers from the SU
campus presenting their works in-progress.

Nonfiction Reading Series Fall 2014

Laura Gray-Rosendale

Thursday, October 9
3:30-4:45
500 Hall of Languages

Laura Gray-Rosendale will be reading from her book College Girl in the Writing Program's Nonfiction Reading Series. There will be a book-signing afterward sponsored by the SU Bookstore.

College Girl recounts Gray-Rosendale's experiences surviving a sexual assault and her path from the trauma of the assault, which occurred while she was enrolled in college here at Syracuse University, to her recovery and her public work and writing to give voice to the survivors of sexual assault. For more on the book, see http://lauragrayrosendale.com/my-research-2/

Professor Gray-Rosendale is Professor of English and President's Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University, holds two Master's and a Doctorate from Syracuse University. In addition to authoring forty articles, essays, and book chapters, Gray-Rosendale has authored or co-edited six books— Rethinking Basic Writing (Routledge), Alternative Rhetorics (SUNY), Fractured Feminisms (SUNY), Radical Relevance (SUNY), Pop Perspectives (McGraw-Hill), and College Girl: A Memoir (SUNY/Excelsior). College Girl was a Gold Medal Winner for the 2014 IPPY Award, a Book of the Year for Mountain Living, a Finalist for the May Sarton Memoir Award, and a Finalist for the USA Books Award in Memoir.

Gray-Rosendale teaches classes from the first-year through graduate levels in rhetoric and popular culture, memoir, graduate composition, literacy studies, theories of autobiography, and the history of rhetoric. She also directs the S.T.A.R. (Successful Transition and Academic Readiness) English Writing Program for the LEADS Center, a curriculum that addresses the needs of students who are first-generation and/or in economic need.

This event is sponsored by The Writing Program, The Humanities Center, The Department of English, The Department of Anthropology, The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies,
and the Labor Studies Working Group.

The reading is free and open to SU students, faculty, and staff, and also to the general public.

Nonfiction Reading Series Spring 2014

Student Nonfiction Reading

Thursday, April 10
3:30-5:00
500 Hall of Languages
Syracuse University

Please join us for the Student Nonfiction Reading, featuring undergraduate and graduate students reading the dynamic creative nonfiction they've developed in WRT 114 and 422, AAS 338 and CCR 760/WGS 700 classes.

Creative nonfiction is flourishing in the global 21st century, as writers combine journalism, poetry & memoir, history & activism, war & peace, philosophy & tall-tale-telling—just about any form and any "subject" you can imagine. This is writing from in-between and overlapping spaces, from people writing out lives of many identities, multiple perspectives, and layers of locations.

This event is free and open to the public.

Nonfiction Reading Series Fall 2013

"At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her."

Cheryl Strayed is the author of #1 New York Times bestseller Wild, the New York Times bestseller Tiny Beautiful Things, and the novel Torch. Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0 and optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon's production company, Pacific Standard. Wild was selected as the winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, the Indie Choice Award, an Oregon Book Award, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and a Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. Strayed's writing has appeared in The Best Americam Essays, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Allure, The Missouri Review, The Sun, The Rumpus—where she has written the popular "Dear Sugar" column since 2010—and elsewhere. Her books have been translated into twenty-eight languages around the world. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their two children.

There also will be a question and answer session with students from 3:45 to 4:30.

Thursday, October 31
4:00-5:00
001 Life Sciences Building
Syracuse University

The Writing Program is pleased to announce that the
first Nonfiction Reading Series reader of Fall 2013 will
be Melissa Febos, author of Whip-Smart: The True
Story of a Secret Life (2010, St. Martin's Press). Febos will be reading from her fearless and illuminating memoir about working as a dominatrix at a Manhattan dungeon. As the New York Press put it, Melissa Febos "ably dissects her own and others' psychological urges and sexual politics and presents it in a way that renders the title apt."

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press, 2010). Her work has been widely anthologized and appeared in publications including Glamour, Salon, Dissent, New York Times, Bitch Magazine, The Rumpus, Drunken Boat, Hunger Mountain, The Portland Review, and The Chronicle of Higher Education Review. She has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, CNN’s Dr. Drew, Anderson Cooper Live, and elsewhere. The winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction prize, she is the recipient of a 2012 Bread Loaf nonfiction fellowship, and 2010 & 2011 MacDowell Colony fellowships. Melissa has co-curated the Mixer Reading and Music Series in Manhattan for six years, and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University and MFA faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). A member of the board of directors for VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, she grew up on Cape Cod, and lives in Brooklyn.

There will be a book signing and reception to follow the reading. SU Bookstore will be on site selling copies of the book.

Nonfiction Reading Series Spring 2013

Wednesday, April 10
3:30-5:00
500 Hall of Languages
Syracuse University

The Writing Program is pleased to announce that the final Nonfiction Reading Series reader of Spring 2013 will be Brad Herzog.

Herzog is author of States of Mind, Small World, and Turn Left at the Trojan Horse, as well as numerous children's books. Herzog spends a couple of months each year traveling in an RV with his wife and sons, and these experiences have helped him to create his three travel memoirs: "It is, as Mark Twain once put it, 'pleasuring with a vengeance.'"

Of his decision to become a writer, Herzog writes, "I suppose it was Bilbo Baggins who made me a writer. In the sixth grade, I read The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale of a fellow who prefers the comforts of home but soon develops a taste for adventure (which sounds a lot like me). I was awed by the world created from an author’s imagination – by the profound possibilities of filling a blank page. I immediately began a fantasy novel of my own, completing a few paragraphs before promptly giving up. As has been said before, easy reading is hard writing. "

"What's best about Herzog's writing is not so much the goal but the search along the way—as it is always in those memorable travel books that rise to the level of literature... A Herzog book eschews the obviously strange, trading it for a fascination with the ordinary."— American Book Review

"This is how a quest should be done: You bundle up everything you know. You take stock of who you are and who you aren't. You head out armed with humility and outrageous playfulness. You look for meaning, laughing at your own self-consciousness... Herzog's stitching is so good, so seamless — he follows Odysseus' story until it becomes his own... Herzog looks, listens and gives us dozens of real characters and plenty of reasons to leave home."— Los Angeles Times

Creative nonfiction is flourishing in the global 21st century, as writers combine journalism, poetry & memoir, history & activism, war & peace, philosophy & tall-tale-telling—just about any form and any "subject" you can imagine. This is writing from in-between and overlapping spaces, from people writing out lives of many identities, multiple perspectives, and layers of locations.

Nonfiction Reading Series Spring 2013

The Writing Program is pleased to announce that the first Nonfiction Reading Series reader of Spring 2013 will be James D. Johnson. Dr. Johnson will read from his book Combat Trauma: A Personal Look at Long-term Consequences. Members of the Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group will also participate in the reading.

As chaplain during the Vietnam War with the 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Division, Johnson didn’t carry a gun, but was in 22 firefights, 10 of which turned into major battles. Serving with the Mobile Riverine Force in the Mekong Delta for nearly a year beginning in July 1967, Chaplain Johnson was determined to be with his men when they needed him most, during combat. After Vietnam, Johnson stayed in the Army serving at Fort Bliss and in Germany. After 15 years, Lt. Col. Johnson retired from the Army and earned his doctorate in marriage and family counseling.

Nearly four decades after serving in Vietnam, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) overtook Johnson, forcing him to give up his career. In his new book, Johnson and 15 of his comrades share their intimate experiences of the combat they waged in Vietnam, and that they continue to wage inside themselves.

Dr. Johnson holds degrees from Wake Forest University, Long Island University, and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a doctorate from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He received several Bronze Stars for valor, the Air Medal, and several Army Commendation and Meritorious Service Medals.

Please invite your students and colleagues.

This event is co-sponsored by the Syracuse University Writing Program , Aging Studies Institute, Institute for Veterans and Military Families, Department of Psychology, and Department of Sociology.

This event is free and open to the public.

Nonfiction Reading Series Fall 2012

Mary Karr

Mary Karr, Professor of Creative Writing in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University , and award-winning, best-selling memoirist. Her New York Times bestsellers include Lit (2009), The Liars’ Club (1995), and Cherry (2001).

Nonfiction Reading Series Spring 2012

Please join us for the final Nonfiction Reading Series event of the year, featuring undergraduate students reading the dynamic creative nonfiction they've developed in our WRT 114 and WRT 422 classes.

Featured readers are:

Kaitlyn Monteiro "Castle Pub"

Sarah Schuster "Bread and Cheese for Your Sins"

Ian Chin "Waiting for Mom"

Meredith Jeffers "The Inevitability of Elsewhere"

Ginger Gunnip "A Soldier Dreams"

Creative nonfiction is flourishing at the edge of the global 21st century, as writers combine journalism, poetry, & memoir, history, war & peace, economics, philosophy, tall-tale-telling—just about any form and any "subject."

This is writing from in-between and overlapping spaces, from those writing out lives of many identities, multiple perspectives, and layers of locations.

Join us for this exciting reading!

Sponsored by The Syracuse University Writing Program
This event is free and open to the public.

Arthur Flowers

The Writing Program is pleased to announce that the first Nonfiction Reading Series reader of 2012 will be our SU colleague Arthur Flowers, author of the graphic nonfiction book I See the Promised Land, which traverses the milestones of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s short life, ministry, and journey. The book features the musical prose of Flowers and art from Manu Chitrakar, a scroll painter from Bengal India.

For more on I See the Promised Land, check out a video of Flowers performing the book. Copies of the book will be for sale by SU Bookstore at the reading.

Arthur Flowers is a novelist, essayist, and performance poet. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, he is the author of the novels, Another Good Loving Blues and De Mojo Blues; a children's book, Cleveland Lee's Beale Street Band; a memoir/manifesto, Mojo Rising: Confessions of a 21st Century Conjureman; and the graphic nonfiction book, I See The Promise Land. He has published shorts and articles and is a blues-based performance poet. He is a founding member/director of New Renaissance Writers Guild, NYC, The Griot Shop, Memphis, and the Pan African Literary Forum. He has been Executive Director of the Harlem Writers Guild. He has been the recipient of NEA and NYSFA awards in fiction and nonfiction. He is a faculty member in the English Department/Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.

His novel in progress, Rest for the Weary, is a meditation on prophecy, destiny, fate and the human condition. He is also working on a nonfiction work, The Hoodoo Book of Flowers. He considers having an online literary presence part of being a 21st Century literary man and has a blog, Rootsblog, a cyberhoodoo webspace.

Nonfiction Reading Series Fall 2011

Stephen Kuusisto

November 9
3:30-5:00 pm
The Katzer Room (347 Hinds Hall)

Our next event will be a reading by writer, poet, disability activist Professor Stephen Kuusisto.

Professor Kuusisto is the Director of the Renee Crown Honors Program at Syracuse University. He is the author of Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and the acclaimed memoir Planet of the Blind, a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." He has also published Only Bread, Only Light, a collection of poems from Copper Canyon Press. A graduate of the University of Iowa's "Writers' Workshop" and a Fulbright Scholar, Kuusisto's work unites literary writing with scholarship on the social construction of normalcy and the history of disabilities.

His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The New York Times, Harper's, Poetry, Narrative, Books From Finland, Disability Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability, Staring Back: An Anthology of Disability Literature, and The Washington Post.

Recognized by the New York Times as a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor, Professor Kuusisto has made numerous appearances on programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline NBC, National Public Radio, and the BBC.

Sponsored by The Syracuse University Writing Program
This event is free and open to the public.

Nonfiction Reading Series Fall 2011

Harriet Brown

October 6
3:30-5:00 pm
500 Hall of Languages.

Our first Nonfiction Reading Series event will be a reading by writer/journalist Harriet Brown on October 6 from 3:30-5:00 p.m. in 500 Hall of Languages. Harriet is an SU colleague and the author of Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia (William Morrow, 2010). Brave Girl Eating chronicles the struggles that Brown and her family had addressing her daughter's anorexia. As she puts it on her website: "This is not a story about family dysfunction, sexual abuse, or a poor little rich girl dying for attention. It’s not a cautionary tale about skinny fashion models and the media. It’s a story about an ordinary teenage girl who fell down the rabbit hole of anorexia—by accident, as it always happens—and about her slow, painful, infinitely courageous climb back up to health and hope, moment by moment, ounce by ounce, one spoonful at a time." This is a remarkable book, and I hope you will join us for the reading and conversation with Harriet afterward.

"Harriet Brown is an eclectic and curiosity-driven writer whose work appears in the New York Times Magazine, O, Health, Glamour, Vogue, and many other publications, on subjects ranging from fat acceptance to forgiveness. A frequent contributor to the Tuesday New York Times science section, she specializes in writing about issues that affect the lives of women and children. Her latest book, Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia, recounts her family's efforts to help their oldest daughter recover from anorexia nervosa. Brown is the editor of two anthologies (Feed Me! and Mr. Wrong), and several other nonfiction books, including The Good-Bye Window: A Year in the Life of a Day-Care Center. Her radio essays can be heard on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "To the Best of Our Knowledge." She co-chairs Maudsley Parents, a website of resources for families struggling with eating disorders (www.maudsleyparents.org), and is a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders. Brown is an assistant professor of magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse, New York, where she created Project BodyTalk, an audio project that collects commentaries about people's relationship to food, eating, and their bodies (www.projectbodytalk.com). She lives in central New York with her family."

Nonfiction Reading Series Summer 2011

Land & Labor: 3 Voices

Thursday, July 21
6-8 pm
Sparky Town http://sparkytown.net

The Writing Program at Syracuse University is pleased to host an evening with three writers who have approached the topics of land and labor from distinctive viewpoints. In novels, poems, and memoir, they offer contemplations of the modern workplace, ethics of labor, late capitalism, ubiquitous technologies, environmental impact, the work of community, and the landscape of Central New York.

Janine DeBaise's poetry and creative non-fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including 13th Moon, Frontiers, and theminnesota review. Her chapbook of poetry, Of a Feather, was published by Finishing Line Press. She teaches writing and literature at SUNY-ESF. She'll be reading excerpts from her forthcoming nature memoir, Snake Dreams, which explores her connection to the landscape of upstate New York.

In Steve Himmer's debut novel, The Bee-Loud Glade (April 2011, Atticus Books), the main character finds himself plucked from his soul-stifling suburban life and hired to spend seven years of his life in silence as a decorative hermit. Despite his concerted efforts at meditation, Finch finds that escaping the modern world is not as easy as switching out his shorts and T-shirt for a hempen belt and tunic. This darkly comic commentary on modern work and wealth thoughtfully probes deep-rooted questions about the nature of man, the workplace, and society (and what happens in their absence). Himmer teaches at Emerson College in Boston, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and is on the faculty of the First-Year Writing Program. His stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Hobart, The Los Angeles Review, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, PANK, Emprise Review, and Everyday Genius.

Minnie Bruce Pratt's most recent book is Inside the Money Machine, described by one reviewer as "anti-capitalist poetics." Her previous book, The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems, received a Lambda Literary Award; her poems about her relationship to her sons as a lesbian mother, Crime Against Nature, were chosen as the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. A member of the National Writers Union-UAW Local 1981, Pratt does anti-racist and anti-imperialist organizing with the International Action Center and its Women's Fightback Network. After 30 years of adjunct teaching, she is a part-time Professor of Writing & Rhetoric and Women's & Gender Studies at Syracuse University.

Sponsored by The Syracuse University Writing Program
This event is free and open to the public.

Nonfiction Reading Series Spring 2011

Writers In-Between:
Creative Nonfiction from the Writing Program

Please join us for the final Nonfiction Reading Series event of the year: "Writers In-Between: Creative Nonfiction from the Writing Program." Come and hear readers from CCR, The Writing and Rhetoric Major, and the Writing Program faculty read from their creative nonfiction. This reading—organized by Minnie Bruce Pratt—features students who have taken her WRT 422 course or her Maymester graduate/undergraduate course.

Creative nonfiction is flourishing at the edge of the global 21st century, as writers combine poetry, essay, biography, history, economics, philosophy, physics, sociology, tall-tale-telling—just about any form and any "subject." In all fields of inquiry, creative nonfiction rejects either/or, and demands both/and. This is writing from in-between and overlapping spaces, those writing out lives of many identities, multiple perspectives, and layers of locations.

"Food-based reflections on Italian food, American culture, and globalization.

"Despite the inclusion of six classic recipes, Bitter Greens is not an ethnic cookbook but a Roman banquet of political satire, cultural criticism, and culinary memoir. Set primarily in the Empire State and arranged like the courses of a traditional Italian meal, Anthony Di Renzo's wide-ranging essays meditate on Italian food at the noon of American imperialism and the twilight of ethnicity, exploring such issues as the Wegman's supermarket chain's conquest of Sicily; assembly-line sausages; the fabled onion fields of Canastota, New York; the tripe shops of postwar Brooklyn; Hunts Point Market and Andy Boy broccoli rabe; and the fatal lure of Sicilian chocolate. Is the new global supermarket a democratic feast, Di Renzo asks, or a cannibal potluck where consumers are themselves consumed? Sip an aperitif, toast Horace and Juvenal, and enjoy Chef Di Renzo's catered symposium. It will feed your mind, tickle your ribs, and heal your spleen.

Anthony Di Renzo, a fugitive from advertising, teaches classical rhetoric and professional writing at Ithaca College. Cited in Best American Essays, his work has appeared in Alimentum, Il Caffé, Cottonwood Magazine, Feile-Festa, The Normal School, River Styx, Syracuse Scholar, and Voices in Italian Americana, and he is the author of American Gargoyles: Flannery O'Connor and the Medieval Grotesque and editor of If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and cats, and buys his broccoli rabe at the local farmers market."

The Writing Program is pleased to announce that our fall featured speaker in the Nonfiction Reading Series will be George Saunders.

October 213:30-5:00
Katzer Room, Hinds Hall

George Saunders is the author of three collections of short stories: the bestselling Pastoralia, set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape; CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and In Persuasion Nation, one of three finalists for the 2006 STORY Prize for best short story collection of the year. Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline were both New York Times Notable Books. Saunders is also the author of the novella-length illustrated fable, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, which takes us into a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, and the New York Times bestselling children's book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, illustrated by Lane Smith, which has also won major children's literature prizes in Italy and the Netherlands. The Boston Globe lauds Saunders' ability to "construct a story of absurdist satire, then locate within it a moment of searing humanity."

Most recently, he published a book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone, which received critical acclaim and landed him spots on The Charlie Rose Show, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Colbert Report. Vanity Fair wrote of the book,"Saunders's bitingly clever and compassionate essays are a Mark Twain-syle shot in the arm for Americans, an antidote to the dumbing down virus plaguing our country. Well, we live in hope." His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, GQ, and Harpers Magazine, and has appeared in the O'Henry, Best American Short Story, Best Non-Required Reading, and Best American Travel Writing anthologies.

Please let your students and colleagues in other departments know about this reading.

The Writing Program is pleased to announce that our spring featured speakers in the Nonfiction Reading Series will be Shannon Meehan and Roger Thompson, authors of Beyond Duty: Life on the Front Line in Iraq. They will give a reading and lead a discussion on their book on Thursday, February 18 from 3:00-4:15 in 500 Hall of Languages.

A book signing will follow.

Beyond Duty: Life on the Front Line in Iraq is the memoir of Lt. Shannon Meehan, a tank platoon leader in the First Battalion, Twelfth Regiment of the First Cavalry Division. Recounting his deployment to the Diyala Province of Iraq and his difficult return to the States, this work reveals his transformation from a young man with clear ideals and ambitions to a worn soldier attempting to cope with the devastation of the war on his life. It shows a soldier who, only weeks after declaring with certainty that he had killed “only bad guys,” discovers the shattering consequences of a war without battle lines. The memoir is co-authored with Roger Thompson, Meehan’s former professor at Virginia Military Institute.

Please let your students and colleagues in other departments know about this reading.

A Syracuse area intergenerational writing group for veterans will be announced at this event. If you are interested in taking part in this group, please contact Eileen E. Schell, Director of the Syracuse University Writing Program at eeschell@syr.edu.

Veteran sportswriter and nonfiction writer Jack Cavanaugh will join us for our Nonfiction Reading Series during Homecoming Week. A Syracuse University alumnus, Cavanaugh is author of three nonfiction books, Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL (Random House, 2008), and Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey (Random House, 2006), and Damn the Disabilities: Full Speed Ahead (WRS Publishing, 1995). Tunney was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in biography.

His work has appeared most notably on the sports pages of The New York Times, for which he has covered hundreds of varied sports assignments. In addition, he has been a frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated and written for Reader’s Digest, Tennis, and Golf magazines, and other national publications. Over his career, he has covered scores of major boxing bouts, along with the Olympics, the World Series, Super Bowl games, the Masters Golf Tournament, and both the U.S. golf and tennis opens. He is also a former reporter for ABC News and CBS News. Cavanaugh is currently an adjunct writing professor at Fairfield University.

Download a selection of Jack Cavanaugh's published articles (zip file).

Cavanaugh will speak/read from his work for our Nonfiction Reading Series on Thursday October 1, 2009 from 4:00-5:00 p.m in 500 Hall of Languages. Syracuse University Bookstore will be on hand with his books to sell, and Jack will be signing books immediately after the reading.

Susan Faludi

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist/nonfiction writer Susan Faludi will be on campus as part of the Feminist Rhetorics for Social Justice Symposium and as part of the Writing Program's Nonfiction Reading Series. WP Director Eileen Schell invites you to join us in opportunities to meet Faludi and discuss her work. She is looking forward to talking with our students, answering questions, and getting into dialogue about her books and work as a writer. Please let your students know and encourage them to attend. Copies of Faludi’s three books are in the 239 office for check-out.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

11:00-12:30

Faludi meets with Writing Program students, majors, and minors and faculty and staff for an informal discussion of her new book The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America.

500 Hall of Languages.

2:00-3:00

Open Forum Session with Susan Faludi: Syracuse University students and faculty are invited to meet Faludi and discuss her work in an open question and answer session.

With her seminal book Backlash, Susan Faludi charted a new course for Feminism in America. Over her esteemed career, Faludi has chronicled-with astonishing clarity- the changing roles of men and women in society, becoming one of our most provocative voices on women’s rights. In her major new work, The Terror Dream, she examines, as only she can, the political and cultural fallout from 9/11.

Susan Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women was praised by Publishers Weekly as an "eloquent, brilliantly argued book that should be read by everyone concerned about gender equality." The book was her monumental investigation into the backlash against feminism in the 1980s and the assault against career-minded women. A bestseller, Backlash established Faludi in the tradition of towering Feminist authors: she stood with Gloria Steinem on the cover of Time, while Newsweek said the book was "as groundbreaking as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique."

In her latest release, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, Faludi gives us an unflinching dissection of the mind of America during the war on terror. In probing and accessible prose, Faludi boldly explores how our media and our politicians responded to the terrorist attacks by calling for a return to a society where men are men and women are victims—and how this thinking, rooted in our earliest mythologies, has made America a weaker and less secure place. "This is a book that had to be written," writes Barbara Ehrenreich, "and only Susan Faludi could do it so brilliantly and engrossingly."

Faludi is a winner of The Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Critics Circle Award. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Nation and The New York Times, and is also the author of Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. In her popular talks, she challenges modern stereotypes and explores the way gender roles have changed and developed in America in the past few decades. Encouraging audiences to re-evaluate their own views and convictions, she shows them what work remains to be done for true equality to be achieved.

Judith Kitchen and Minnie Bruce Pratt on the question "What is
Nonfiction?

1:30-2:00

Q & A

2:00-2:30

Readings by Judith Kitchen and Minnie Bruce Pratt

2:30-3:00

Break

3:00-4:15

Open Mic Nonfiction Readings: PWIs, TAs,
FTF, Majors, Minors

4:15

Wine and cheese reception, book signing

April 17

Student workshops with Judith Kitchen

12:30-1:50 Lunch with Writing Program Teachers, Writing Majors and Minors

Judith Kitchen is the author of a novel, The House on Eccles Road, winner of the S. Mariella Gable Prize from Graywolf Press, two collections of essays, Distance and Direction (Coffeehouse Press) and Only the Dance (U. of South Carolina Press), as well as a critical study of William Stafford, Writing the World (Oregon State University Press). She is co-editor of two collections of short essays, In Short and In Brief (both W. W. Norton), and the editor of a third collection, Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction. Her awards include an NEA fellowship in poetry, a Pushcart Prize in nonfiction, and recognition as a distinguished teacher of adults. She has been the invited guest at many residencies, including Centrum, Split Rock Arts Program, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Chautauqua Writers Institute. Kitchen has judged a number of national awards, including the Pushcart Prize for poetry, the Theodore Roethke Prize, the Anhinga Prize, the AWP Nonfiction Award, the Bellingham Review's Annie Dillard award for creative nonfiction, the Bush Foundation fellowships, and the Oregon Book Award. She is an Advisory and Contributing Editor for The Georgia Review where she regularly reviews poetry. In addition, she has the distinction of being called—by Newsday—the Evel Knievel of literature.

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a nationally acclaimed poet and writer who has
inspired a whole generation of feminists and activists. She has published
six books of poetry, The Sound of One Fork, We Say We Love Each Other ,
Crime Against Nature , Walking Back Up Depot Street , The Money Machine ,
and The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems . Minnie Bruce also has
published collections of autobiographical and political essays, including
Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991 , which includes her feminist classic, the
essay “Identity: Skin Blood Heart." With Elly Bulkin and Barbara Smith,
she co-authored Yours In Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives On
Anti-Semitism and Racism . Her book of prose stories about gender boundary
crossing S/HE appeared in 1995. Minnie Bruce is also completing, with noted
transnational theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty, a volume of theoretical
dialogues that is tentatively titled At Home in the Struggle.

Sponsored by the Writing Program with generous support from the English
Department.